Building agents

Agents are autonomous entities that can run tasks, decide, and interact with their environment. In IBM watsonx Orchestrate, agents are a key component of the agentic AI framework, enabling you to create complex, dynamic systems that can adapt and respond to changing conditions.

By building agents, you can:

  • Automate repetitive tasks
  • Improve decision-making processes
  • Enhance customer and employee experiences
  • Increase operational efficiency

For example, you can create an agent that automates data entry tasks like processing invoices or updating customer records—saving time and reducing errors.

Agent builder

The agent builder is a visual, no-code interface that empowers business users and developers to:

  • Design and build agents using an intuitive drag-and-drop UI
  • Integrate agents with existing systems and workflows
  • Deploy and manage agents across channels and environments

Whether you're customizing a prebuilt agent or creating one from scratch, the Agent Builder provides all the tools you need to bring your automation ideas to life.

Getting started with Agent Builder

Creating your first agent in Agent Builder is straightforward. Here’s how to begin:

  1. From the main menu, go to Build.
  2. Navigate to All agents.
  3. Select an existing agent or click Create agent + to add a new agent. See Creating and customizing agents for more details.

You are be taken to a visual workspace where you can begin designing your agent’s workflow.

The role of environments in agent building

The agent builder has two environments for agents: draft and live. An agent in draft is in the process of development and is not available for use in channels like chat. Deploying the agent to live makes it available for use with the current copy of the resources that you use to ground it.

Manage agents and their resources from the Manage agents page within the agent builder. The agents cards have the label "Live" for deployed agents, or none label for agents that are in draft.

The draft environment for building

An agent in the draft environment contains all your in-progress work while you build and test the agent with different resources such as collaborator agents, tools, and knowledge. Everything you do in the agent while it's in draft is not exposed to users.

The following table details the actions that you can do within an agent based on the resources that you can add to it while in the draft environment:

Resource Test in the Preview chat Use in the chat homepage Add as a resource to agents
Collaborator agents Supports Does not support Supports
Toolset Supports Does not support Supports
Knowledge Supports Does not support Supports
Behavior Supports Does not support Supports
Voice Supports Does not support Supports

The live environment for production

An agent in the live environment contains the resources that the agent must use to interact with users over the channels that you configured while you build the agent.
The version of the resources that the agent uses is defined at the time that you deploy the agent.

The following table details the actions that you can do within an agent based on the resources that you can add to it while in the live environment:

Resource Test in the Preview chat Use in the chat homepage Add as a resource to agents
Collaborator agents Supports Supports Supports
Toolset Supports Supports Supports
Knowledge Supports Supports Supports
Behavior Supports Supports Supports
Voice Supports Does not support Does not support

Versioning resources

When you deploy an agent, it brings every resource that you use during development. Each of these resources can evolve independently over time, and to track their changes, your agent uses the latest version available for the resource either in the draft or live environment.

A version of a resource is the copy of the resource at a specific point in time. When you deploy an agent, it automatically uses the latest version of each of its resources to help ensure that the deployment reflects the most up-to-date state of all its components.

Using resources within agents

What an agent brings from each resource might vary depending on the resource:

  • Knowledge

    You add knowledge within the agent, and the settings that you do for grounding the agent with knowledge are in the scope of that specific agent only. It is not reused across agents within your instance.
    When you deploy the agent, these settings are not available for reuse across agents within your watsonx Orchestrate instance.

  • Toolset

    You create tools within the agent. When you deploy an agent, the tools that you create become available in their current state for use.
    Also, members of your watsonx Orchestrate instance can reuse these tools in their own agents.

    Note: Connection management for tools is done and maintained through the ADK. For more information, see Managing connections in the IBM watsonx Orchestrate Agent Development Kit documentation.

  • Behavior

    Define where and how the agent should respond to user requests, including its actions, responses, and any restrictions. To enable document-based chat, turn on 'Chat with documents'. You can set the number of citations to display in the webchat. This applies only to document-based chats.

  • Collaborator agents

    Collaborator agents operate by using the copy of their current state at the time that you deploy the main agent. Using an agent as a collaborator does not depend on whether it is in the draft or live environment.

  • Channels

    After configuring the channel and deploying the agent, it becomes accessible within that channel. Users can interact with the agent and use all associated resources directly through the configured channel.

  • Voice configuration (Preview)

    Configure a voice for your agent and make possible a verbal interaction with users.